Posts

• 06/11/2014 Blogging the developer's way

  Our last post was about migrating from WordPress to Jekyll. Although the engine is pleasant and has a great design, the main benefit of the move is actually something else. Of course, we’ll need blog hosting services before we can start writing anything. Hosting One of... more

• 05/28/2014 From Wordpress to Jekyll

  As you can see, we’ve moved to a brand new blog, powered by Jekyll. This is a good opportunity to shed some light on a process that, although not terrifying, is not totally without surprises. 

In software in particular, there are no happy surprises. 

 Switching When we... more

• 04/25/2014 When is your code DRY enough?

  You're aware that duplication is a rampant disease: more code, more fragile, less maintainable, less readable. You even use one or another tool and make your code reviewed to find most of them. When facing some duplicate code, you're not always feeling comfortable to... more

• 04/18/2014 5 reasons you are not doing code reviews

  Whether your work in a startup like us at PullReview or in a multinational, getting your team to start doing code review probably got stuck with the typical answer: That’s a very good idea, but… Having been there several time,... more

• 04/16/2014 PullReview: Badge and integration with BitBucket and GitLab

  PullReview recently gets a few new features: Badge Public Review for Public Repo BitBucket and GitLab and lots more: HipChat notification Performance of the home page Profile Heartbleed Support Contact Badge Badges in README.md are a very common way... more

• 04/11/2014 7 daily use cases of Ruby String

  Strings are everywhere. You deal with String instances not only every day, but probably every minute. They came from files, databases, REST APIs, or you simply use them to print results. It's a pervasive representation, and Ruby provides plenty to ease its manipulation. But String comes with... more

• 04/04/2014 When should I use a Set in Ruby?

  You develop a small contact manager for a client. Contact = Struct.new(:name, :email) One important feature is the possibility to define a list of contacts. granny = Contact.newmore

• 03/28/2014 7 slow and painful deaths by regexp

  The road to hell is paved with regular expressions - Ilian Iliev Dot is a special char Carriage return in content Denial of Service by regexp Non escaping of special chars Over specifying Validating... more

• 03/14/2014 7 daily use cases of Ruby Hash

  Everyday, you deal with Hashes. We use a lot of them everyday when coding PullReview, from Rails infamous 'params' to the various data we get from the GitHub JSON API. Creating a new Hash or retrieving an element by its key, are common and simple to do.... more

• 03/07/2014 Avoid spilling your Rails application secrets

  Oups, I just sent the production password in plain text through the internet Following last week post about Errbit, I thought to share something related. When using external system like Errbit or AppSignal, or NewRelic, - any external... more

• 02/28/2014 Get notified of your Rails app exceptions with Errbit

  Updated: now with Sidekiq integration code, thanks to purephase. So, you’ve shipped something Congratulations! Now, hopefully, users are coming to use your application, whether a... more

• 02/24/2014 7 daily use cases of Ruby Array

  Ruby and Ruby on Rails come with great reference documentation (Ruby doc, Rails doc, or alternatives such as APIdock, or the recent omniref covering also all gems). But when you need to find how to check if one array has all elements of another, you... more

• 02/20/2014 TDD your Rails app without convincing your boss

  You've just been hired by a company to work on an existing project. When discovering its code base, you realize the tests are very rare, even totally absent. You don't wait to discuss what you think a big lack with your boss. Unfortunately, you can't convince him whatever the... more

• 02/17/2014 Which development editor should I use when developing in Ruby on Rails?

  You've just started to code your first Ruby on Rails application and you're wondering if there isn't a better editor than the one you're using. Maybe you're a beginner and you started with a simple text editor without syntax coloring, or you come from Java world and you use... more

• 02/14/2014 How to name your Ruby classes & methods using Soylent Green

  Naming is not really just about naming, as per exhibit one: class A attr_accessor :a1, :b1 def a() "#{a1} #{b1}" end end Could you tell me what this code does? Now let’s check another sample: class... more

• 01/24/2014 One Year of PullReview

  [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="350"] (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption] I don’t scale Two years ago, I was still employed as team leader of an... more

• 01/14/2014 A Journey in Payment world - Part 4: we have a Plan

  A Journey in Payment World This is a series about integrating a payment system into your web application. While inspired by our own experience, and so Stripe and Ruby oriented, most of the problems and solutions are probably useful in other technical environments. more

• 01/03/2014 ebook review: Memoirs of a team leader

  Some weeks ago, we stumbled upon Lukasz self-published ebook “Memoirs of a Team Leader”. Lukasz picked my interest by professing: “This is the book I wanted to read after I had become a software team leader.“ Having been a team leader for a good part of the... more

• 12/31/2013 PullReview: GitHub Status and others

  First of all, dear reader, I wish you Happy Holidays! This blog post is about the last release of PullReview, that includes a few features before the end of the year: Same Actions are grouped for Code Smell, Complexity, Design, and Duplication Lower severity for... more

• 12/19/2013 A Journey in Payment World - Part 3: what is happening here?

  A Journey in Payment World This is a series about integrating a payment system into your web application. While inspired by our own experience, and so Stripe and Ruby oriented, most of the problems and solutions are probably useful in other technical environments. more

• 12/05/2013 A Journey in Payment world - Part 2: the only part you need

  The only part needed? (missed the part 1? Read it here) Making a serie with a part 2 titled “the only part you need” is probably a little misleading. Fact is, just after having picked up Stripe as our provider and... more

• 11/26/2013 Rubies, Gems and Dollars - a journey in the payments world - Part 1: The backpack

  Update: Part 2 available This is the first post of a short series about our experience of integrating payments into PullReview. My objective is to be as practical as possible. There will be code, but also some reflexion/question that are not strictly... more

• 11/14/2013 Code Review - why the tooling matters

  A tale of two teams Several months ago at 8th color, we did setup a rule of “no story should be closed without a code review”. This has worked well for us so far. Two weeks ago, I was at... more

• 11/07/2013 Why you need a "Definition of Done"

  OH Customer: Strange, I don’t see the new merged list feature we discussed about last month. Developer: No, it is not there yet. Customer: But it was marked “done” in our last... more

• 10/23/2013 We don't have time for code reviews

  OH If you’re a developer since some years, you probably have heard several or all of those explanations: “We would love to do code reviews, but we have a very tight schedule" “Quality matters to us,... more

• 10/17/2013 PullReview Incident News

  As those of you that used PullReview yesterday know, we did experience severe load problems. The situation is going back to normal, albeit slowly, as the review jobs have a lot of work to do. First of all, we apologize for the inconvenience caused. We hope you did get... more

• 10/10/2013 Arrrrcamp shorts

  We were at Arrrrcamp, the great, near (for us Belgians) and cheap Ruby conference in Ghent. Most of the presentations will be available online, so this is more like some shards from those two very packed days. more

• 09/30/2013 We're at Arrrrcamp! (and you should, too)

  Quick "news": we'll be at Arrrrcamp (Ghent, Belgium) this Thursday and Friday, the best Rubyconference in Belgium, with Ruby, Beer, and Pirate talks. [caption id="" align="alignright" width="240"] Arrrrcamp (Photo credit: Andrew*)[/caption] If you are there too, come and say hello.... more

• 09/26/2013 PullReview: Reach your Ruby Code Skill Walhalla

  TL;DR: PullReview is close to Beta now. In this post we'll show you the ease of use, the code reviews, and how PullReview guides you to become a better Ruby developer. Some weeks ago, we more

• 09/12/2013 We don't do code reviews to improve the code

  We do them to improve ourselves Short piece on an interesting discussion at a customer yesterday: we are testing what I call “AA” (as in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings) code reviews meetings with the team. Those are for developers only (no non-developer is present), and anyone can... more

• 09/06/2013 How our own workflow is driving PullReview

  We’ve been developing PullReview since six months now, putting a lot of energy in it. As the feedback from the alpha is integrated into the application, users’ questions led me to look back at the reasons we made PullReview the way it is, and the realize... more

• 08/26/2013 Confession of a Java Anonymous - Ruby is so brittle, and I like it

    Ruby is so brittle that I would never use it. -- Stéphan From a Java developer perspective, I thought Ruby was so brittle that I would never use it. How could you survive... more

• 08/20/2013 DRY in views

  A designer’s work We’re working with a designer on PullReview, and we’re very happy about the results so far.. Besides providing us with mock-ups, she also takes care of also the UI (HTML, SCSS, JavaScript). The integration of the initial “static” work into our... more

• 07/31/2013 Introducing PullReview - Your Ruby Batmobile for Automated Code Review

  TL;DR 8th Color has been around for almost two years now, and our new tool, PullReview, brings us closer to our goal: helping developers develop themselves. PullReview is an Automated Code Review Tool for Ruby developers using GitHub,... more

• 07/25/2013 Managing nil in JSON and Hashes

  Introduction  While developing PullReview (our Automated Code Review tool for Ruby), we interact a lot with external services (like GitHub), whose APIs mostly return JSONs. While nice, this lead us to some attempts at managing nil values at different... more

• 07/17/2013 Spring cleanup for object creation in Rails

  TL;DR A complex object creation can clutter a controller. It's better to move it into a dedicated method of the corresponding model. Introduction [caption id="" align="alignright" width="240"] Cut your Weeds asap.[/caption] As software grows, what was... more

• 07/04/2013 Partials: Abuse of them, don't abuse them

  TL;DR; Use partials, they are key to reducing duplication (DRY) - and to keeping your front end maintainable. Apply the same logic to partials as you do to your back-end code - templates are code. Introduction [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="150"]more

• 06/25/2013 Did you say Complexity, eh?

  TL;DR After introducing what complexity is, how it can be measured, and how to monitor it in Ruby - I'll get to the difficult part: how to reduce it in Ruby. The post is concluded with some thoughts and recap. Intro [caption id="" align="alignright" width="240"]more

• 06/13/2013 Code Rules are Lines, not Walls

  TL;DR Coding rules are good. You'll find good exceptions for each once in awhile (and bad exceptions all the time). That exceptions occur does not invalidate any rules, and sticking to best practices is a good idea. A white line is like a wall... more

• 06/05/2013 Duplication is a Rampant Disease

  When your code base is growing, it's very unlikely that you and your devmates won't create any duplication. There are multiple reasons, but in all cases it's an undesirable situation that you want to get rid off. After briefly recalling some of those reasons - discussing why you... more

• 05/28/2013 Style Matters

  Does style matter to you? Here is the Martin 15-seconds test about whether style does matter to you or not. Let’s take a look at this code: class Blog_engine def initialize @posts = [] end def addPost post @posts... more

• 05/22/2013 Git tips and tricks 2

  Since the last time I've shared a set of tips and tricks about Git, I've learned new ones that I regularly use. Again, hope they could help you as they helped me. Enjoy! How to show the difference between two branches for a same file?... more

• 05/14/2013 Git: Who cares about branches? It's all about collaboration and code reviews

  TL;DR: Using Git has made our team much better by removing barriers to collaboration and code reviews. Those are the real Git benefits, not specific features like fast branches. Introduction I heard about Git several times before starting 8th color, but was never... more

• 05/03/2013 Use your custom Bootstrap icons in your Rails apps

  Twitter Bootstrap offers a great set of icons provided by Glyphicons that you can use easily in your pages. For instance, <i class="icon-ok"></i> If you don't like those icons, you can use... more

• 04/15/2013 Dead code is rotting your codebase

  TL;DR; : You are always coding for a fellow programmer, not for a machine. You should put the most energy to make it easy for he/she to understand your code. The machine will be fine anyway. Dead or commented code is like false trail signs that only befuddle people,... more

• 04/02/2013 How to time feedback loops

  TL;DR; A good amount of the processes and tools we use in development aim to reduce the feedback cycle between a task and the observation of its results. This occurs at every level, from the company to single code lines. While the industry has been working hard to... more

• 03/25/2013 Fixing the Marriage Between Flow & Code Review

  Flow - From my First Taste to Complete Addiction When I was still in school, I quickly discovered the impact of my attention on my efficiency - not only in terms of time - in terms of quality also - double strike! The equation was simple: more... more

• 03/15/2013 We need collective code ownership and it sucks

  Introduction Now that we've been three instead of two for some months, we're turning back into a real development team, instead of just individual programmers. It reminds me of my previous experiences in teamwork, both as a team leader and as a consultant. This renewed team reality... more

• 03/07/2013 Puppet – Vagrant : Smarter / Better / Stronger

  "Guest" entry by Stéphan, cross-posted from his own blog "Don't make the same mistake twice". We are glad to have Stéphan onboard, and have him share some of the work he is doing here at 8th color - Martin After a few weeks of devops 'light' practice, I... more

• 03/01/2013 Do not fall in the learning curve!

  TL;DR; [caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The top is close or not ..."][/caption] As a software developer, one of the main challenge I've met is to find... more

• 02/21/2013 We were smart

  Introduction At the start of 2013, we took a moment to pause and reflect on this first year of existence of 8th color (see Christophe’s post for the numbers). This was the opportunity to ponder the choices made, confirm some and update others. This was... more

• 02/08/2013 About being a Team Leader

  Introduction I used to be a team leader, before starting 8th color. Now we are a small development team here (the three of us) at 8th color, and I’m still advising some other teams about their methodologies. This made me think again about what it means for me to... more

• 02/01/2013 2012 Recap

  As a new year begins, Martin and I have looked back at 2012 to share our lessons, our disappointments, our good points. That exercise helped us to underline what we didn't like, what we did, and what we learned. I can say 2012 was a great opportunity for us to... more

• 01/25/2013 Strategies toward fast(er) tests

  [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Fast as Usain Bolt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)"][/caption] I talked some weeks months ago (time flies when you’re having fun) about our... more

• 01/15/2013 First time entrepreneurs are first time employers

  Introduction We’ve shared here and there posts about our experience as first time entrepreneurs. One aspect that became quite visible those last weeks for us with Stephan’s arrival is that as first time entrepreneurs, we’re also first time employers (few of us start companies with the objective... more

• 12/19/2012 Technical founders have nothing to lose

  TL;DR :If you are in IT, and thinking about starting a company, do so. The bottom line is that nothing bad can really happen on a very personal level. more

• 12/10/2012 What we are paying for

  TL;DR; Living in a scarcity model does not means avoiding spending money at all costs - especially when those costs are high. Introduction A month ago, I did describe startups (ours included) as Slum Economies, essentially due to resource scarcity. I’m now taking the reverse approach, by taking... more

• 12/03/2012 Networking in the Valley

  Introduction One of the biggest reasons of our visit in the US is to start creating a network in the valley, in order to get possible advices, leads or even investors. Here are some experiences about networking in the Valley. Start early 8th color is just one year... more

• 11/28/2012 California Mission Day 1

  Introduction [caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="English: Picture of San Francisco at Sunset. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)"][/caption] We have the chance this week to be part of... more

• 11/27/2012 Novice or Master, what should it mean for a developer?

  Learning Model? In the field of education and learning, some models have been elaborated. One well known is the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. It describes how students acquire skills through formal instruction and practicing. As we address the question of development skills with Sybil, it's for us... more

• 11/20/2012 On writing [code]

  TL;DR; : Writing code is writing. Advices related to writing are often still sound in the code context. Introduction I may be a programmer, but I’m also an avid reader of non-technical books (commonly know as “fiction”. Having done some (sufficiently bad to stay in the secret of my PC) attempt... more

• 11/16/2012 The Devengers

  "And there came a day, a day unlike any other… when Earth’s mightiest heroes found themselves united against a common threat… to fight the foes no single superhero could withstand… on that day, The Avengers were born." more

• 11/13/2012 My test suite takes 9 months to run

  Test output Finished tests in 9 months 12 days 6 hours, 1.0046 tests/month, 3.5037 assertions/months. Testing as developers, testing as founders As developers, we are proponents and practitioners of TDD. This means that we try to keep a good suite of tests for our Sybil application. This leads... more

• 11/09/2012 Why we need a Software Museum

  Disclaimer: long, probably loosely linked ideas about the importance of transmission in the Software Development industry. Contains (probably bad) architectural references and Venice pictures. You've been warned. Finally, even if most what I show here is probably true for IT as a whole, I've chosen to limit myself to the... more

• 11/02/2012 The vagrant and the puppet: provisonning Sybil

  The objective We need to be able to create VMs able to run Sybil, typically to bring and install them inside a customer environment. Packaging Sybil as a VM allow us to be reasonably independent of the customer technical infrastructure. The current situation We are creating VMs using... more

• 10/30/2012 8 lessons from my first year as an entrepreneur

  In a few months, you can learn a lot. Last Thursday, I was invited to be a member of jury of the final of the startup boostcamp organized by the Brussels Microsoft Innovation Center. About seven months ago, we pitched in the previous session in March 2012.... more

• 10/26/2012 Popular is the new Good - and it's ok

  Introduction Some weeks ago, I had to start investigating a new technology (dita, but that is not really important) in the context of a customer project. In addition to being unfamiliar (even remote) to me, I discover it to be rather unknown by the community, something that had... more

• 10/23/2012 Git tips and tricks

  Today, I would like to share some tips and tricks I've learned about Git. There are cases I meet often, and they gave me a better understanding of Git. It's certainly not a deep coverage of the topic, but it could help you as it helped me. Enjoy! How to... more

• 10/19/2012 Dublin Web Summit : When the building moves to you

  As announced previously, we were at the Dublin Web Summit those last days. Fresh from the Airport, I tried to put some feedback about it. Which is not that easy, mainly because... Big The Web Summit is a big event. Like, mind bogglingly big. There was more... more

• 10/16/2012 Sybil is in Dublin tomorrow!

  Tonight the Sybil team flies to Dublin [caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Crépuscule sur Dublin (Photo credit: FroZman)"][/caption] We're proud to have been selected amongst the world's top 100 startup finalists of the Spark... more

• 10/11/2012 Startups are slum economies

  Slums? While not enjoying positive images (notably due to social conditions), economic studies has also described slums as operating at a high level of efficiency. With more than scarce resources, slums inhabitants manage to develop thriving economies despite odds stacked against them: low level of education and bad... more

• 10/08/2012 Arrrrcamp 2012: Pirates on Rails

  Why? [caption id="" align="alignright" width="295" caption="Ahoy!"][/caption] As a developer, I think it's important to attend some tech event for several reasons: to be in touch with the community, to meet other developers, to see again some acquaintances or friends, to learn... more

• 10/05/2012 Startup of the month featured on MIC Brussels blog

  Martin has recently shared with the MIC Brussels our experiences as founders of 8th color. They've just published it, go take a look. more

• 10/02/2012 What is a developer team culture ?

  Introduction During our (now finalised - more on this shortly) interview process, one of my questions to the candidate was: "What makes a good development team ?". Although we had discussed this with Christophe, and that I had my own take on it, I realised the... more

• 09/28/2012 Do you want to play?

  Once upon a time Last Wednesday, I visited one of our Pilot to run Sybil on another of their projects. The project is developed on another site, that means another environment, new deployment challenge. I won't dig into the technical issues I've... more

• 09/25/2012 Java to Ruby Cheat Sheet

  Introduction Following my posts on the joyful transition from the Java world to the Ruby world, and due to (sort of) popular demand (may be in a quite specific segment, still), here is a quick tentative of an equivalence between the two worlds. If you're a... more

• 09/21/2012 Bootstrapping Design Review: All you have to do is practice

  A few thoughts about user interface design There is something very strange about design. People commonly think that it's a task reserved to a kind of persons mastering graphical art. It's like you cannot be a designer if you're not good at drawing. This is a common misconception.... more

• 09/17/2012 The meta startup world

  TL;DR; The number of companies, people, administrations, tools, software dedicated to help or support startups is overwhelming. While insomuch a good news (especially for us), I’m worrying somewhat that more people and energy seem to be dedicated to help startups that to make startups. Introduction As you may... more

• 09/13/2012 An exercise in boldness

  TL;DR Creating a startup may require a lots of skills, but I’ve found a majority of them to depends on one main capacity: boldness. Of course, competency is important, but daring may be even more. It is not about doing it right. It is about doing it, period. more

• 09/10/2012 Beer + Sybil + 4 Geeks = Tech Brew podcast

  A few months ago, we were invited by Gilbert West and Andrew Matheson in Tech Brew. Tech Brew shows to the world the Belgian tech startup scene through podcasts powered by Belgian Beers. A whole program. They are like our local Robert Scoble, but it's better:... more

• 09/03/2012 Modularization in Rails : A Case Study

  Object We have been following quite closely the raging debate in the Rails world about Object Oriented Programming (OOP), not confusing Rails with your application and how to achieve fast tests. While not exactly identical, all those... more

• 08/31/2012 Pictures of our Office

  We've talked about 8th color, about our product Sybil, but we had forgotten the place. Here is a totally objective, insider report of 8th color offices. Workplaces My desk No big surprise here : as most programmers,... more

• 08/27/2012 The unknown taxonomy of development skills

  My path [caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="What my first output program looks like"][/caption] I started to program aged 4 with Logo. I then... more

• 08/22/2012 Why Refinements matters

  [caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Not this Enterprise, sorry (Photo credit: Wikipedia)"][/caption] Development in The Enterprise Unfortunately, I’m not talking about the USS Enterprise here (wonder in which language... more

• 08/09/2012 Hiring!

  Looking for our first Developer for Sybil 8th color’s first birthday is almost on us, Sybil 1.0 version is just at the door, looks like a good time to hire our first employee: a software developer. It’s quite a milestone for us, and we are glad to be able to... more

• 08/08/2012 I'm not listening to e-music

  TL;DR We need to stop with those “e-” things (or with those “virtual” things). If you think that the function is what matter, stop renaming things that did not change. It could even help to fix some things we screw up in the transition. About We seems to... more

• 08/03/2012 The unexpected reality of deployment

  The task [caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Just ship (Photo credit: waferbaby)"][/caption] Three months ago, another company interested in Sybil accepted to be a pilot. Very quickly, the question of installation came, and we had to... more

• 07/30/2012 Woodcutting in the morning

  TL;DR When facing a complex problem, in programming (but probably also outside), the way to success is often in removing the blocking factors, which is probably not the problem itself, but most probably you. More practically, your lack of skills or proper tools. Working on those is the way... more

• 07/23/2012 Developer, the modern architect and general contractor

  Building a new digital house Developing a new software is like building a new house. You design an ideal plan in your head. The plan consists in realizing a purpose, where each part has its role to play. You even think about it in an aesthetic way. You see... more

• 07/17/2012 The incredible learning machine

  TL;DR; If learning new things is one of your priorities in your work as IT professional, you should quit your work and create a startup. Introduction As the co-founder of a startup active in Talent Management, I’m concerned about learning and the way people (including myself) do acquire... more

• 07/13/2012 Pitching: One year on

  [caption id="" align="alignright" width="150" caption="get Attention"] Last Wednesday, I've attended the Founder Institute Brussels Startup Pitch Bootcamp. The speakers were Filip Tack, a FI mentor, and... more

• 07/11/2012 You are not just picking a language : Follow up on "From Java to Ruby" post

  Monday’s post about a transition  from Java to Rubymore

• 07/09/2012 From Java to Ruby - what I love, what I miss

  UPDATE : Some follow up on this here. Object My story is probably similar to one thousand others: used to be a Java programmer, switched to Ruby six months ago when... more

• 07/02/2012 Startup Event Presence 101

  Context We were at ICT Spring the 19-20th June, and at EYIF Unconvention last week, and had a really great time (as you may more

• 06/28/2012 Unconventional Innovator Award

  As we told you 3 days ago, Martin has pitched at the InnoPitch Competition with 5 other finalists. We've got interesting questions and feedbacks from... more

• 06/24/2012 Meet us at EYIF Unconvention on 26-27th June !

  On Tuesday 26th and Wednesday 27th, Brussels is hosting Europe Young Innovators Forum Unconvention (watch Twitter “#unconv12” hashtags). It’s a great opportunity to meet, well, young innovators but also a lot of people concerned by innovation, from investors to political figures and... more

• 06/18/2012 New website + meet us tomorrow (June 19th) at ICT Spring!

  A quick update for two news. First of all, our website is finally up, with our brand new logo for both 8th color and Sybil: We've... more

• 05/29/2012 Skills Management #4: CSC Belgium case

  Summary CSC Belgium provides IT services and custom software development. They make a point to tackle challenges and succeed thanks to the developers they employ. The management of their skills is then a part of their assets. Preliminary We continue to schedule meetings with key people... more

• 05/22/2012 A word for those bad applications : let them live

  TL;DR Before rewriting even an obviously badly written application, be sure that a) you’ll do it better (this time), b) there is a real ROI to do it and c) it is the best usage of your time. You know them, I know them Those applications... more

• 05/16/2012 Solving the founder's dilemma

  Remember this tweet from not so long ago: “The entrepreneur's dilemma: Maintaining friendships. Building a great company. Spending time w/family. Staying fit. Getting sleep. Pick 3.”. I think I solved this dilemma almost without thinking about it. May be not completely, but mostly, with a single simple act. Our... more

• 05/03/2012 Elevator UX lesson : Genericity failure

  An elevator UX This is a (very bad) picture I took with my phone, in the elevator of a modern looking-IT company hosting building.  Not being used to disruption in the rather bland world of elevator UX, I was struck by this “innovative” design. more

• 04/26/2012 Why do skills matters, part 1

  Why As we are working on Sybil (our new talent management tool for development teams), we obviously spend a good amount of... more

• 04/20/2012 Skills management praxis #3: IgnitionOne case

  Summary IgnitionOne is a digital marketing solution company helping customers with SEO, media optimization and lead generation (among others). Regrouping teams from Belgium, US and India in a rapidly evolving business, the company faces its own lot of challenges, notably in skills management. Preliminary more

• 04/16/2012 Just a game

  TL;DR When you face a problem, don't overthink. Just do it. During my PhD, I fell several times in a very annoying spirit, totally messing up my critical thinking and my creativity. I was unable to progress and go beyond the issues I then faced. My productivity dropped and the... more

• 03/29/2012 Agile coaching : lessons learned

  TL;DR In parallel with Sybil (customer) development, we are working as IT professionals in different missions and contexts. Those last weeks, I've been coaching a development team about coding practices and methodologies, notably Agile ones. Facing a very heterogeneous team, mostly self-taught is an interesting experience as it... more

• 02/24/2012 Skills management praxis #2: M-Team case

  Summary M-Team is an IT service provider offering (among other services) custom software solutions since more than 20 years. In a technological environment that is evolving fast, it had to put concrete actions in place to evaluate and improve its developers skills to be able to face... more

• 01/30/2012 Skills management praxis #1: Emakina case

  TL;DR Considering the nature of its business demanding a wide range of expertises and a good flexibility, Emakina has specifically set up several strategies of skills management. Those strategies have a clear impact on the organization of the developers and their works and... more

• 01/23/2012 Founder Institute: Closing thoughts

  As we graduated last week, with the five other (surviving) founders in our session, now seemed like a good time to share one last time about the experience (our previous posts on this subjects were done after one and more

• 01/12/2012 Ask: What are "development skills" ?

  TL;DR When talking about development skills, we encompass many different yet important things (languages, libraries, frameworks...). Those buzzwords used on CV or job postings have real world signification, but when we say that someone is skilled in the Spring framework, what do we mean ?

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• 01/06/2012 Coming Soon: Sybil - skills management made simple

  As IT professionals, we're following closely what is said about the development sector. One of the core aspect of our beliefs that seems to gain steam those days is that a software company has only one asset: its developers, and the skills that they possess - or... more

• 12/27/2011 Patterns of knowledge exchange

  As we make contact with various software companies and professionals, whether as customers, co-workers, friends or partners, we made an habit to ask how developers are sharing knowledge in their companies. Our initial question is almost always the same: "Let say that one of the developers is stuck with a... more

• 12/14/2011 Nuggets of knowledge

  Prototyping day Yesterday I decided to start prototyping in Ruby one aspect of our future product (more on this one soon), and the experience was valuable enough for me to share it here. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish, and I knew it was feasible... more

• 12/09/2011 Startup Weekend Brussels 2: the storm of startups

  The Startup Weekend is an 54-hours weekend event during which several persons with different backgrounds form a team around an idea and defend it before a jury the Sunday evening. We have participated to the last one  in Brussels on the weekend of the 21st Oct 2011: the... more

• 11/20/2011 The Lucky Few

  As part of our own startup creation process, we naturally tend to look for articles, books or events related to startup creation, and to discuss with people that are or were in the same situation. Sometimes, some nuggets of knowledge or insight emerge from those exchanges, one of them I... more

• 11/06/2011 Founder Institute D + 21

  Three weeks ago that we've started and it looks like forever already. We though it would be a nice time to give some more feedbacks on our experience in the Founder Institute program. Nothing said last time really changed, but we got some kind of hindsight with those first weeks... more

• 11/03/2011 Arrrrcamp: Fast Rails Tests

  By Corey Haines, Ruby on Rails globe trotter Corey started his talk by jumping immediately to his core issue, using live demo from the command line to further his point, that can be summarized as: having tests is good, but when the tests take time to run,... more

• 10/31/2011 Running Lean Workshop by Ash Maurya

    A systematic process for iterating from Plan A to a plan that works. Ash Maurya I (and Martin) have attended to Running Lean Workshop, before the Startup Weekend Brussels 2nd edition. I follow Ash Maurya's blog... more

• 10/24/2011 Founder Institute D + 7

  One week only (one week already!) that we did start the Founder Institute program. Last post was about what to expect. This one will be more about experience and lessons learned. The work is hard The program work with weekly sessions, and assignments to be completed before each. Failure to... more

• 10/24/2011 Arrrrcamp: Stop Swashbucklin' and Shipshape yer Front-end

  By Roy Tomeij, partner at 80beans Remember when I talked of people taking the "pirate" theme quite seriously? Roy is the one that did, from the title of his talk to some nice picture in his slides (and a picture of him with lasers... more

• 10/21/2011 Bemco launched

  Some weeks ago, we wrote here that we were working on Bemco, an online editor of Business Model Canvas. We needed it one and still need it. We thought other people would like one also. We've decided to make it. After two weeks of... more

• 10/20/2011 Arrrrcamp: Managing the logs of your (Rails) apps

  By Lennart Koopmann, Sofware Engineer at Xing, developer of greylog2 I missed the parenthesis in the title (they are not mine, but come directly from Arrrr schedule), and they were there for a good reason: Lennart Koopman talk about logging, without going in the specifics... more

• 10/19/2011 Arrrrcamp: Data-driven-development

  By Elise Huard. Big data seems more and more to be the "next big thing" (the speaker said half-jokingly "the next cloud"), which is something quite strange, as data has been there since a long time, and that jobs around it (data miner) always were considered pretty boring -... more

• 10/17/2011 Arrrrcamp Key note: Working with designers

  Arrrrcamp ? How many 'r' is that ? We were at Arrrrcamp in Ghent (Belgium, Europe) on friday October 7th. Arrrrcamp is a Ruby (that make one 'r') and Rails (that makes two) conference, with help from Radiant, a company making a (thanks Benny) Rails-based CMS (that makes three).... more

• 10/14/2011 Starting your company in Brussels with the Founder Institute

  A few weeks ago, we decided to enrol in the program of the Founder Institute, dedicated to help young IT entrepreneurs to start their company. We tend to describe the Institute as a mix between professional training as sessions are given by professional of the IT sectors, mainly CEO,... more

• 10/12/2011 Arrrrcamp: Dancing with Arel: filterkit and reportkit

  By Ewout Van Troostenberghe, 10-forward Ewout presented two libraries he has written to simplify complex queries and reporting (subtotals, grouping, etc) in a Rails application. While ReportKit & FilterKit surely deserve a visit on their own, most of the interest of the talk... more

• 10/10/2011 Gamification by design ... really?

  I've bought the book Gamification by design authored by Gabe Zichermann and Christopher Cunningham thanks to a daily deal of O'Reilly. The deal consisted in an early release of the book and the videos Gamification Master Class. I like games, notably board,... more

• 10/03/2011 Short update : Bemco screencast available!

  With most of our desired features now done, we have replaced the Bemco screenshot with a small screencast, that does the application more justice (let's face it, a static screenshot is'nt really a good showcase for a collaborative app). [youtube width=550 height=309]Npj1HrwI_30[/youtube] (By the way, this is a... more

• 09/26/2011 Getting started with jQuery

  Why jQuery ? (and not Prototype? Or Scripty? Or doing JavaScript by hand?) JavaScript and Me Having been a Java server-side developer for some years, I did manage to avoid doing (real) work in JavaScript to this day. My adventures in the web client side were few and far between,... more

• 09/20/2011 A first product

  When you start your first venture, you spend a lot of time to eat and digest a lot of new knowledge. It's necessary, but it's not enough if you don't get real. Me and Martin are strongly convinced that learning is actually done by doing and failing.... more

• 09/07/2011 Chronicles of a (somewhat) reluctant switcher - Java

  Introduction Willing to refresh my Sonar knowledge, I decided to (logically) start with setting up my environment on Linux, from ground up. This post summarize the needed actions. Objective Java 6 up and running Eclipse IDE (probably apart from the Aptana, better be able to make them evolve independently)... more

• 09/02/2011 Pitch Bootcamp, take two

  Back for a second Pitch Bootcamp, again by the Founder Institute, once more at Betacowork (seems like a really nice place to work, if you are a startup or freelance in Brussels without office, go take a look... more

• 08/30/2011 Nested resources with independent views in Ruby on Rails

  Introduction In REST-style architecture , a resource is simply a source of information, the one you want to expose. The resource is referenced thanks to a global identifier such as an URI. For example, in... more

• 08/25/2011 Why we (and others) still need JVMs

  Most of our reading and prototyping of those days is done in the web-dynamic-language sub-universe (typically Ruby / Rails), and most of the (quite vocal) inmates there are not exactly Java-lovers, citing, not always inappropriately (among others): The Java language verbose nature The complexity of using multiple framework and layers piled... more

• 08/22/2011 8th color, the color of magic

  After having chosen one and asked people what they think about, we've given a name to our company: 8th color. We've got a lot of very interesting comments from our friends, family, colleagues and also readers thanks to direct interaction and the poll. First of all,... more

• 08/19/2011 Who are our customers?

  When we sketched our first business model canvas, we quickly hit into this question. We quickly answered: "They are the developers". But when considering the value propositions, we realized two facts: their needs are not the same, and the developer is not... more

• 08/15/2011 The shelf-less book

  Some reflexion on my growing usage of ebooks, with my iPad as ebook reader. Reading on a screen This could be a show-stopper for some people. It certainly isn't for me: I'm used to read long articles and even books on my PC since the screens changed from CRT to... more

• 08/08/2011 The name game

  As the necessary papers are almost done for the company to emerge, we're back at a decision that we postponed very efficiently to this day: the name game. As much as we like the enkio name, we know since several weeks now that we won't be able to make it... more

• 07/25/2011 Business Model Generation

  In our quest building-our-company, I've just finished a book: Business Model Generation notably written by Alexander Osterwalder. This book presents a new tool allowing to develop and sketch out new or existing business models: Business Model... more

• 07/07/2011 Experiencing Brussels Pitch Bootcamp

  Yesterday, Martin and I have attended the Brussels Pitch Bootcamp organized by the BetaGroup and the Founder Institute. The event was hosted at the BetaGroup Coworking. It was the opportunity to discover this very nice, clean and calm... more

• 07/03/2011 Rails / Django: The showdown

  Introduction As written here some weeks ago, we're in the process of selecting a web framework for our future developments. To clarify the subject, I did some test in both technologies... more

• 07/01/2011 Business Toolbelt: The Business Model Canvas

  As a programmer, I have come to value the benefits of having good tooling for whatever job I'm doing, and those of mastering them. With some years in the craft, I've already have quite a nice toolbox/toolbelt, with a selection of tools (software) I enjoy being productive with. But as... more

• 06/27/2011 Git and Gitosis on Debian Squeeze

  Preliminaries We've started to prototype some of our ideas those last weeks. Currently, we're working on 3 projects. For one, we have 2 branches. Today, it exists wonderful tools to manage collaboration and revision of source code. Even when I'm alone in a software development project,... more

• 06/21/2011 The Design of Business, again.

  Christophe did not only write a very thorough review of "The Design Of Business" by Roger Martin. He also gave me the book ("You have to read this."). The last time he did this, it was for "Business Model Generation", which I cannot praise and recommend enough, nor see the... more

• 06/18/2011 Chronicle of a (somewhat) reluctant switcher - day 1

  As expressed in my previous post, I'm getting convinced that staying on a "windows-only" machine for the development is, if not a dead-end (I'm sure there is aplenty of happy windows using rails/django developers out there. Hey! Where are you? Hey! Don't hide, I just want to talk to you... more

• 06/15/2011 The design of business

  When you've never created a business, you're in front of a total mystery that you discover and experiment for the first time. But you're not the first, there are a plenty of people that did it before you. And hopefully, among them, they are many sharing their experiences, thoughts, theories... more

• 06/12/2011 Is windows viable as a development OS for Rails/Django ?

  First, a short disclaimer : I knew before beginning that windows was not the -preferred- environment to develop in Rails or Django. But still, I thought it was more like a matter of taste. After some days of work, I'm not sure anymore. Short story : It start right when... more

• 06/11/2011 My usual approach seems useless here

  Normally, when you have a decision to make between two products/cakes/cars/holiday places, spending a little of time can help tremendously : collect a little additional info, and offers that seemed equivalent soon begin to differ (not saying that one is absolutely better than the other, but one is almost always... more

• 05/03/2011 Hello world!

  As for every project, every book, every blog, there is a beginning. This is it. I am Christophe, a software engineer with a PhD. After teaching several IT courses (e.g. C++, OOP) and making researches in natural computing, I've started as freelance IT engineer with interests in... more

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